School board debates merits of half-days

School board member Dr. Peter Treyz recently voiced an issue with the calling of half-days, citing a lack of value for students, especially considering the operating costs of running school for the day.

“What I’m suggesting is we never close the schools in that way,” Dr. Treyz said. “The children don’t get educated that day at all. They have 15-minute classes.”

Board President Mark Lipton also chimed in that perhaps committing the limited time on shortened days to a few key subjects rather than 15 minutes of a wide variety would be more valuable. Dr. Kreutzer responded that the decision to close school for a day or half a day is a difficult decision.

“I’ve been real unpopular with some calls I’ve been making lately,” Dr. Kreutzer said. “I make these calls on safety with the best information that I have. We are going to get as much learning in as we possibly can; every minute counts. And we do not have the luxury of just picking up a day and tacking it on the end and saying we are going all the way through the end of July. If we don’t have school at all on that day, in our opinion that is a day that has been completely lost.”

Dr. Treyz challenged the board to come up with a method to ensure students receive 180 days of education.

“It just seems to me as a taxpayer and as a board member that somehow or another we should brainstorm that when we have a situation like that we can at least get some education in the children,” he said.

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Early dismissals and late starts are always a good call because the safety of students and staff should be a priority.

However, I agree that the built-in 1/2 days, such as those on P-T conference days and the entire last week of school are a terrible waste of time and school resources. And another thing – why do students attend specials (music, art, gym) on shortened days? As far as I’m concerned, the special teachers don’t need to come in to teach (nor get paid) on scaled-back school days. Just doesn’t make sense for parents to shuffle schedules to accommodate these scheduled half-days, while we also still pay for transportation fuel as if it were a full-day.